A SUMMER morning. The air is still; there is no sound
but the churring of a grasshopper on the river bank, and somewhere the timid
cooing of a turtle-dove. Feathery clouds stand motionless in the sky, looking
like snow scattered about. . . . Gerassim, the carpenter, a tall gaunt peasant,
with a curly red head and a face overgrown with hair, is floundering about in
the water under the green willow branches near an unfinished bathing shed. . .
. He puffs and pants and, blinking furiously, is trying to get hold of
something under the roots of the willows. His face is covered with
perspiration. A couple of yards from him, Lubim, the carpenter, a young
hunchback with a triangular face and narrow Chinese-looking eyes, is standing
up to his neck in water. Both Gerassim and Lubim are in shirts and linen
breeches. Both are blue with cold, for they have been more than an hour already
in the water.
"But why do you keep poking with
your hand?" cries the hunchback Lubim, shivering as though in a fever.
"You blockhead! Hold him, hold him, or else he'll get away, the anathema!
Hold him, I tell you!"
"He won't get away. . . . Where can
he get to? He's under a root," says Gerassim in a hoarse, hollow bass,
which seems to come not from his throat, but from the depths of his stomach.
"He's slippery, the beggar, and there's nothing to catch hold of."
"Get him by the gills, by the
gills!"
"There's no seeing his gills. . . .
Stay, I've got hold of something . . . . I've got him by the lip. . . He's
biting, the brute!"
"Don't pull him out by the lip,
don't--or you'll let him go! Take him by the gills, take him by the gills. . .
. You've begun poking with your hand again! You are a senseless man, the Queen
of Heaven forgive me! Catch hold!"
"Catch hold!" Gerassim mimics
him. "You're a fine one to give orders . . . . You'd better come and catch
hold of him yourself, you hunchback devil. . . . What are you standing there
for?"
"I would catch hold of him if it
were possible. But can I stand by the bank, and me as short as I am? It's deep
there."
"It doesn't matter if it is deep. .
. . You must swim."
The hunchback waves his arms, swims up
to Gerassim, and catches hold of the twigs. At the first attempt to stand up,
he goes into the water over his head and begins blowing up bubbles.
"I told you it was deep," he
says, rolling his eyes angrily. "Am I to sit on your neck or what?"
"Stand on a root . . . there are a
lot of roots like a ladder." The hunchback gropes for a root with his
heel, and tightly gripping several twigs, stands on it. . . . Having got his
balance, and established himself in his new position, he bends down, and trying
not to get the water into his mouth, begins fumbling with his right hand among
the roots. Getting entangled among the weeds and slipping on the mossy roots he
finds his hand in contact with the sharp pincers of a crayfish.
"As though we wanted to see you,
you demon!" says Lubim, and he angrily flings the crayfish on the bank.
At last his hand feels Gerassim' s arm,
and groping its way along it comes to something cold and slimy.
"Here he is!" says Lubim with
a grin. "A fine fellow! Move your fingers, I'll get him directly . . . by
the gills. Stop, don't prod me with your elbow. . . . I'll have him in a
minute, in a minute, only let me get hold of him. . . . The beggar has got a
long way under the roots, there is nothing to get hold of. . . . One can't get
to the head . . . one can only feel its belly . . . . kill that gnat on my
neck--it's stinging! I'll get him by the gills, directly . . . . Come to one
side and give him a push! Poke him with your finger!"
The hunchback puffs out his cheeks,
holds his breath, opens his eyes wide, and apparently has already got his
fingers in the gills, but at that moment the twigs to which he is holding on
with his left hand break, and losing his balance he plops into the water!
Eddies race away from the bank as though frightened, and little bubbles come up
from the spot where he has fallen in. The hunchback swims out and, snorting,
clutches at the twigs.
"You'll be drowned next, you
stupid, and I shall have to answer for you," wheezes Gerassim.
"Clamber out, the devil take you! I'll get him out myself."
High words follow. . . . The sun is
baking hot. The shadows begin to grow shorter and to draw in on themselves,
like the horns of a snail. . . . The high grass warmed by the sun begins to
give out a strong, heavy smell of honey. It will soon be midday, and Gerassim
and Lubim are still floundering under the willow tree. The husky bass and the
shrill, frozen tenor persistently disturb the stillness of the summer day.
"Pull him out by the gills, pull
him out! Stay, I'll push him out! Where are you shoving your great ugly fist?
Poke him with your finger--you pig's face! Get round by the side! get to the
left, to the left, there's a big hole on the right! You'll be a supper for the
water-devil! Pull it by the lip!"
There is the sound of the flick of a
whip. . . . A herd of cattle, driven by Yefim, the shepherd, saunter lazily
down the sloping bank to drink. The shepherd, a decrepit old man, with one eye
and a crooked mouth, walks with his head bowed, looking at his feet. The first
to reach the water are the sheep, then come the horses, and last of all the
cows.
"Push him from below!" he
hears Lubim's voice. "Stick your finger in! Are you deaf, fellow, or what?
Tfoo!"
"What are you after, lads?"
shouts Yefim.
"An eel-pout! We can't get him out!
He's hidden under the roots. Get round to the side! To the side!"
For a minute Yefim screws up his eye at
the fishermen, then he takes off his bark shoes, throws his sack off his
shoulders, and takes off his shirt. He has not the patience to take off his
breeches, but, making the sign of the cross, he steps into the water, holding
out his thin dark arms to balance himself. . . . For fifty paces he walks along
the slimy bottom, then he takes to swimming.
"Wait a minute, lads!" he
shouts. "Wait! Don't be in a hurry to pull him out, you'll lose him. You
must do it properly!"
Yefim joins the carpenters and all
three, shoving each other with their knees and their elbows, puffing and
swearing at one another, bustle about the same spot. Lubim, the hunchback, gets
a mouthful of water, and the air rings with his hard spasmodic coughing.
"Where's the shepherd?" comes
a shout from the bank. "Yefim! Shepherd! Where are you? The cattle are in
the garden! Drive them out, drive them out of the garden! Where is he, the old
brigand?"
First men's voices are heard, then a
woman's. The master himself, Andrey Andreitch, wearing a dressing-gown made of
a Persian shawl and carrying a newspaper in his hand, appears from behind the
garden fence. He looks inquiringly towards the shouts which come from the
river, and then trips rapidly towards the bathing shed.
"What's this? Who's shouting?"
he asks sternly, seeing through the branches of the willow the three wet heads
of the fishermen. "What are you so busy about there?"
"Catching a fish," mutters
Yefim, without raising his head.
"I'll give it to you! The beasts
are in the garden and he is fishing! . . . When will that bathing shed be done,
you devils? You've been at work two days, and what is there to show for
it?"
"It . . . will soon be done," grunts
Gerassim; summer is long, you'll have plenty of time to wash, your honour. . .
. Pfrrr! . . . We can't manage this eel-pout here anyhow. . . . He's got under
a root and sits there as if he were in a hole and won't budge one way or
another . . . ."
"An eel-pout?" says the
master, and his eyes begin to glisten. "Get him out quickly then."
"You'll give us half a rouble for
it presently if we oblige you . . . . A huge eel-pout, as fat as a merchant's
wife. . . . It's worth half a rouble, your honour, for the trouble. . . . Don't
squeeze him, Lubim, don't squeeze him, you'll spoil him! Push him up from
below! Pull the root upwards, my good man . . . what's your name? Upwards, not
downwards, you brute! Don't swing your legs!"
Five minutes pass, ten. . . . The master
loses all patience.
"Vassily!" he shouts, turning
towards the garden. "Vaska! Call Vassily to me!"
The coachman Vassily runs up. He is
chewing something and breathing hard.
"Go into the water," the
master orders him. "Help them to pull out that eel-pout. They can't get
him out."
Vassily rapidly undresses and gets into
the water.
"In a minute. . . . I'll get him in
a minute," he mutters. "Where's the eel-pout? We'll have him out in a
trice! You'd better go, Yefim. An old man like you ought to be minding his own
business instead of being here. Where's that eel-pout? I'll have him in a minute
. . . . Here he is! Let go."
"What's the good of saying that? We
know all about that! You get it out!"
But there is no getting it out like
this! One must get hold of it by the head."
"And the head is under the root! We
know that, you fool!"
"Now then, don't talk or you'll
catch it! You dirty cur!"
"Before the master to use such
language," mutters Yefim. "You won't get him out, lads! He's fixed
himself much too cleverly!"
"Wait a minute, I'll come
directly," says the master, and he begins hurriedly undressing. "Four
fools, and can't get an eel-pout!"
When he is undressed, Andrey Andreitch
gives himself time to cool and gets into the water. But even his interference
leads to nothing.
"We must chop the root off,"
Lubim decides at last. "Gerassim, go and get an axe! Give me an
axe!"
"Don't chop your fingers off,"
says the master, when the blows of the axe on the root under water are heard.
"Yefim, get out of this! Stay, I'll get the eel-pout. . . . You'll never
do it."
The root is hacked a little. They partly
break it off, and Andrey Andreitch, to his immense satisfaction, feels his
fingers under the gills of the fish.
"I'm pulling him out, lads! Don't
crowd round . . . stand still . . . . I am pulling him out!"
The head of a big eel-pout, and behind
it its long black body, nearly a yard long, appears on the surface of the
water. The fish flaps its tail heavily and tries to tear itself away.
"None of your nonsense, my boy!
Fiddlesticks! I've got you! Aha!"
A honied smile overspreads all the
faces. A minute passes in silent contemplation.
"A famous eel-pout," mutters
Yefim, scratching under his shoulder-blades. "I'll be bound it weighs ten
pounds."
"Mm! . . . Yes," the master
assents. "The liver is fairly swollen! It seems to stand out! A-ach!"
The fish makes a sudden, unexpected
upward movement with its tail and the fishermen hear a loud splash . . . they
all put out their hands, but it is too late; they have seen the last of the
eel-pout.
1885.
Short Stories
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